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Topics - BMan

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1
Rules Questions / Trade and 5/2 openings
« on: May 15, 2015, 09:36:47 pm »
If you open 5/2, you can't use Trade to immediately trash two coppers and gain two silvers, since you have nothing in your hand after playing all five coppers and before buying. Right?

2
Variants and Fan Cards / Dark Arts
« on: July 10, 2013, 09:18:05 pm »
Action/Reaction

+1 Action
+1 Buy
Reveal your hand. +1 Card per Curse and Ruins revealed. If you do not reveal a Curse or a Ruins, +$1.
======
When you gain a Curse or a Ruins, you may discard this. If you do, +2 Cards.


Similar to crossroads, but it looks for curses and ruins instead. And it makes it at least slightly palatable if you don't show any, if for no other reason than guaranteeing a +buy.

How much should this cost? I was thinking $4 as-is, but should it be $5? Or something else?

3
Dominion General Discussion / Counter: Fortress vs. Saboteur
« on: July 04, 2013, 06:56:03 pm »

Saboteur is quite possibly the most annoying attack card in the game. Not only does it target only the cards you actually want in your deck, it keeps looking until it finds one, and destroys it. Most aggravating if that was a card you needed, even if you could turn it into a cheaper one that was at least somewhat useful.

Enter sab's kryptonite: The fortress. If you have fortresses in your deck, you WANT your opponent's sabs to hit one of them, because this is what will happen:

1. The attack is negated, without the need for a moat or lighthouse.
2. You have the option of gaining a $2 card (because you technically DID trash the fortress).
3. You add a card to your hand during another player's turn.
4. Which just so happens to be a village.

(Note, BTW, that countering a knight with a fortress--that just sounds so cool, BTW--gives the attacked person all of these benefits except for #2.)

If fortress did #1 alone--blocking the attack--it would be worth the investment. But by giving you all these "little" benefits that can really add up, fortress turns saboteur into an outright liability. Sabs are rather weak as-is, but with fortresses on the board, they can become as bad as scouts. Maybe worse. In short, if both cards are in the supply, don't even think about picking up a saboteur unless there is a very specific reason for doing so.

4
Dominion General Discussion / IGG/Grand Market
« on: April 01, 2013, 02:47:55 am »

Every so often, you discover almost by accident a strategy that seems to stand no chance, but in practice works very well. This is one such strategy, and here is how it works:

1. Buy IGGs, as many as you can, as often as you can.
2. Once they are gone, use all the copper to buy some gold.
3. As soon as you can, stock up on GMs.
4. Profit.

The key to this working is to hit hard and fast with the IGGs. Even if they scramble for duchies, an effective attack will prevent the duchies from running out before you can use GMs to empty the provinces (or hopefully, colonies). That means skipping on some golds during the midgame even when you hit $6. Half-measures won't work; this really is an all-in strategy. And don't forget that even though IGGs are only worth $1, they can be in play when you buy a GM. Every coin adds up here.

There are two reasons why this can fail unless the conditions are just right. First, if the $4-and-below cards are reasonably strong, if there are any trashing cards (even Trade Route), or if your opponents get even some of the IGGs, then they can just duchy-rush before you get more than a couple GMs, if that. The second reason is that IGGs and GMs do not like each other. Most likely, your opponent or opponents would have to be in a coma for this to actually work. Happy April Fool's Day! (Now go gain a curse if you actually fell for this. :p)

5
Dominion General Discussion / Things We Learned From Dominion
« on: November 12, 2012, 09:51:40 pm »
1. Rats will literally eat anything except each other.
2. Ill-gotten gains are never gained in secret. And when they are gained, everyone else suffers as a result.
3. There is no such thing as a “good witch.” They do vary in age, however.
4. Having too much copper is usually a bad thing.
5. Chapels encourage you to destroy your cheap stuff. And doing so is usually a good thing.
6. Villages are where all the action is.
7. Owning estates is generally just not worth it. It's just better to rule provinces instead.
8. Cutpurses don't really steal your money; you'll eventually find it again. Thieves, however, do.
9. The main event at masquerade balls was not the dance but a massive gift swap. Everyone was required to participate in it.
10. Gold is not found at the end of rainbows but in tunnels and treasure chests.
11. Bureaucrats do not take money. They give money.
12. Ghost ships and sea hags are real.
13. Mines never produce minerals from scratch. They are actually alchemy factories, where in most cases, copper turns into silver, silver into gold, and gold sometimes turns into platinum.
14. Contrary to popular opinion, court jesters gave out all kinds of stuff. However, in most cases, the good stuff only went to the people they worked for, and the bad stuff went to everyone else.
15. The only reliable way to stand up to a mountebank is to discard a curse (that he probably gave you earlier).
16. As soon as you try to store something in a cellar, equal amounts come back out. This is because all medieval cellars were built with fully functional, automated dumbwaiters.
17. In medieval times, moats were the strongest form of defense known to man. Not even saboteurs or spies could cross them. However, if a castle was ever unfortunate enough to have its moat run dry on the day it was attacked...
18. And lighthouses were just as strong as moats, though they needed to be up and running before the attack arrived.
19. Spies and saboteurs will always reveal themselves when they go to work. They don't seem to mind this.
20. Contrary to popular opinion, pirates never kept the treasures that they raided. For reasons that historians have yet to explain, they destroyed them.
21. It takes two treasure maps to find buried treasure, even though all treasure maps are identical. This is because the print is so faint that it takes looking at two superimposed maps to be able to read them.
22. Knights who engage in battle will always kill each other.
23. Gravedigging is legal, so long as the stolen goods are not too cheap or too expensive.
24. Once a type of item is purchased off the black market, it will never be available again. Buy 'em while you can!
25. Robin Hood was real.
26. You can't both feed and walk a blue dog. It's one or the other; take your pick.
27. You can buy almost anything you want with contraband. Almost.
28. When thieves pillage, they sometimes decide that they don't want to keep the treasure that they found. If that happens, they don't put that treasure back: they destroy it to hide the evidence.
29. The best time for beggars to produce money is when they are under attack. This is because they have learned how to make the best of their hard lives, and they usually come through when circumstances are the most dire.
30. Adventurers don't go looking for action, fame, or fortune. All they want is treasure.

6
Dominion Articles / Hard counters vs. soft counters
« on: October 16, 2012, 11:11:11 pm »
We hear a lot around here about "hard counters" and "soft counters." But what are they? The term has floated around the gaming world for some time, particularly in the video game world. They simply mean this: A hard counter is a response to an attack that not only renders that attack nearly or completely useless, it may well convert the attack into an outright benefit. A soft counter is a response to an attack that still causes some damage to be suffered, but less damage than if that counter had not been played. One can extend that concept to plays beyond mere attacks; more on that later.

In Dominion, the textbook case of the hard counter is the Moat: It shuts down every Attack in the game, and it makes giving opponents Curses significantly harder. It may not make the Curses systematically go away as with Watchtower, but at least it holds them back, plus it can deal with any other Attack. Ambassador? Not happening. Saboteur? Haha, you've completely wasted that card now. And Donald X was kind enough to include the Moat on the recommended first-game board, something that gives newbies a little bit of security from that pesky Militia.

Some hard counters, by contrast, are situational to the Attack. One case of this is the Sea Hag, whose hard counters include Jack of all Trades and Lookout: Both of these cards are guaranteed to hit the Curse just gained, so long as that Curse hasn't already been moved (say, with another Sea Hag). Jack already knows that the next card is worthy of being trashed, and if he already had a Curse in his hand, he can just discard that top-of-deck Curse. Lookout loses its single biggest liability after a Sea Hag gives you a Curse: It is guaranteed to hit at least one card you know you want to trash.

One soft counter to Sea Hag is Farming Village. It doesn't get rid of the Curse; it just moves it to your discard pile. But by doing so, at least you'll see the Curse on one fewer shuffles. Considering that Curses' deck-clogging can be just as bad, if not worse, than their -1 VP, this can make a difference in a close game.

Note that a soft counter to one attack can be a hard counter to another, and of course, it may not counter a third attack at all. Again, Farming Village provides a great example. Its soft counter to Sea Hag is even softer against other cursers, because those Curses start in your discard pile. But against top-of-deck attacks such as Spy, Fortune Teller, and especially Rabble, suddenly Farming Village becomes a hard counter. Have you ever been unfortunate enough to have to put three Victory cards back on your deck because of a Rabble chain? No problem, just play a Farming Village and discard them all, plus any additional Victory or Curse cards immediately behind them. Bonus points if any of those cards are Tunnels!

Possibly the defining hard counter in the game is when Scheme is the Bane to Young Witch. All you have to do is pick up a Scheme and keep putting it back on top after every turn that you play it, and presto--Young Witch is completely shut down. It becomes nothing more than a very bad Warehouse. Aside from Minion, your opponent will likely have a great deal of difficulty overcoming this.

Speaking of Minion, that introduces the ideas of soft and hard counters to strategies, not just Attacks. Has your opponent stocked up on Treasuries? Play a discarding attack. What about an everlasting KC-KC-Scheme-Scheme hand? Minion wipes that out. But be careful, Minion has ways of being hard-countered, such as via Tunnel, or Library, or Horse Traders...

The line can get a little fuzzy when trying to figure out where the line between "hard counter" and "soft counter" is. Few would argue that Library is anything but a hard counter to Militia, because not only does playing it in response give you +5 Cards unconditionally, you can go right past any Actions, meaning you are guaranteed to not draw any actions dead (unless your deck is very thin). But what about Watchtower, which is still strong but a strictly worse reaction to Militia? And Jack of all Trades, which would be just a Smithy-plus-benefits? I still think the case can be made that all three are hard counters, because while Watchtower and Jack don't get you as many cards as Library does, they do other things that make them powerful. So perhaps it is not just the card's reacting to the Attack, but what it does in addition, that can help separate hard from soft counters? Let the jury decide.

Now it's your turn. What are some of your favorite hard counters and soft counters, other than the ones listed here?

7
Rules Questions / Scavenger and Possession
« on: October 11, 2012, 01:10:07 am »
I possess the next player's hand. I make him play scavenger.

Possession means that I can see any cards he can, but not the other way around. So does he have to be able to see his discard pile, or can I keep it hidden from him as I go through it?

Alternatively, since it's technically his turn, am I forcing him to look through his own discard?

8
Game Reports / Buying curses FTW
« on: July 26, 2012, 09:05:40 pm »
http://dominion.isotropic.org/gamelog/201207/26/game-20120726-180128-0f35a78f.html

I've always wanted to do this. :D But god, if I had miscounted VP...

(Yes, yes, I know, I picked up sabs and a swindler with peddler on the board. But...but...he gave me most of my swindlers!)

9
Dominion Articles / Combo: Mint/Fool's Gold
« on: July 13, 2012, 11:49:38 pm »

My old Tae Kwon Do instructor used to say that yellow belts--the second-lowest rank--were the worst to spar against. I think he said this because they have just enough skill to know the basic moves, but not near enough skill to know how to control those moves.

Buying a Mint with a 5/2 opening is almost always a "yellow belt" move. Why? Because, congratulations, you now only have two coin left, plus whatever the $2 card was (if you could even get a decent $2 card). And until Hinterlands, there were only two $2 cards that could give you +Coin without consuming an action, certainly neither of them Treasures. But even then, the only Treasures left to mint were Coppers, and why would you want to mint a Copper? What Mint really needed to justify opening with it was some kind of Treasure that, at $2, would be worth its weight in gold. (Ha ha.) Something that maybe wasn't so great on its own, but once you got several of them, were incredibly strong.

Enter Mint's long-lost love: Fool's Gold. Opening Mint/FG is spectacularly powerful for two reasons: One, FG is heavily dependent on deck-thinning. There's just no sense in buying FG if they are spread all over your deck--hence the apt name. You need to repeatedly have at least two of them in your hand to justify their investment. And second, Mint needs to be able to find good Treasures to mint, not mediocre or crappy ones. Mint brilliantly solves both of these problems: it gets rid of the useless Treasures and multiplies the useful ones, and it does so with a high rate of speed and success. It should be no surprise, then, that Mint/FG is, by far, the best opening with Mint; the only other Mint openings that don't completely suck, not including outlier openings, are Mint/Lighthouse and Mint/Chapel, and there are far better ways to open with those two $2 cards. And it's currently rated as the fifth-best opener in the entire game, right up there with powerhouses such as Tournament/Ambassador and Witch/Chapel.

This raises the question, of course, of what to do with a Mint/Fool's Gold board when you have to settle for the more common, 4/3 opening. If you're lucky enough to get a five-Copper hand on turns 3 or 4, then by all means, get that Mint. Trashing a Silver and three Coppers is risky but still doable. But remember, it's rarely a good play to sack a Gold, or probably even a Fool's Gold for that matter, just to get a Mint. Remember, this is a $5 card we're talking about.

Another word of caution: Thief (edit: and Pirate Ship). Thief LOVES strong, tightly-concentrated decks. There's no fun in watching all your hard work of building an FG deck be lost to someone who bought what is usually a very crappy card, only to see it actually be a strong attack for once. It's the same reason why you really have to be careful with chapeling when Thief is on the board. (Note, BTW, that FG is immune to Noble Brigand attacks.) But, if your opponent starts thieving, you could just grab a Thief of your own. And because your deck should be a lot thinner than his or hers, yours will attack more, hopefully grabbing back a lost FG or two.

All-in-all, it's a rare combo to have the chance at, because it requires two specific cards on the board AND a 5/2 opening. But if you have the chance to do so, give it a shot. You just might want to try it again!

10
Introductions / Hello
« on: July 13, 2012, 11:32:42 pm »
Hi, I've been playing Dominion for a few years now. I like the game, and it's fun to do a little theorycrafting. :) (I'm actually getting ready to post an article about a card combo I really like.)

And yes, I am a Starcrafter. To answer a question others of you will have about that, En Taro Tassadar!

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